jude. (thefixer) wrote in repose, @ 2016-05-04 06:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, daniel webster, jude coleman |
Daniel & Jude: post egg-hunt
Who: Daniel & Jude
What: Clean up on aisle five.
When: Immediately after Daniel's rescue by Claire.
Warnings: Teeny bit gory.
The damage, all in all, was confined. So much so, so much guilt, because after all the both of them had slammed into the music store with their tails collectively between their legs and a few cabinets shoved toward the center of the store (to fish a man out from a pit if not of despair, then of unyielding depth) were all his own fault. On his way in, Jude attempted rectification: cabinets shoved back where they were supposed to be, but the door on the way in was irrefutably broken (courtesy Aubrey and impetuousness brought on by raging hordes of folk who turned out not to exist at all, save in a drug-addled dream). Made no bones about the upstairs, which Jude had to break into all his ownself - lock-picks, rather than forcible overcoming of barriers, thank you very much, delicacy possible.
And perhaps guilt, vestiges thereof were why Jude contained himself and kept his hands to himself when within. A few feet in only, thank you kindly, ever the gentleman, and he acquired a book from a passing pile and acquainted himself with the floor a few feet in from the door. Acquainted himself with the cat, too, who circled and protested the absence of lord and master of the domain and the uselessness of the one who had been sent in his place. Jude liked cats well enough, because they reminded him of Oliver.
By the time the sunshine had passed overhead a while, he was comfortably toward the end of his book and the cat had taken up residence on the meat of his thigh, her claws kneading at nothing dangerously close to his kneecap and the loud rust-rattle of a purr the accompaniment to his fictional delve. And nothing of Daniel, and a faint prickle of something uncomfortably like worry in the general direction of Oliver who had ventured no response.
Still. We had the downstairs break-in to contend with, so everything in time and everything in its place.
Daniel reappeared on the threshold of the upper level like a sunrise in reverse, a staggering bloody shadow in ominous certainty of continued forward movement. He left behind him the echoes of a short conversation with Claire, who had escorted and then departed with some reluctance when he insisted he would be fine in his home once he had a moment to be in it. The distant echoes of the discarded words, some in Claire’s higher tones and Daniel’s fatigued ones, were still louder than the sound of his feet on the stair. The sun exposure had left Daniel feeling like an undercooked steak, and all of his senses were sputtering and stuttering in his head. He didn’t hear the heartbeat until it was far too late and he was through the door, and it was there he stopped short as the cat bounded toward him out of the warm lamplight of the living room.
Daniel didn’t bend down to greet the cat immediately, but instead turned the burnt side of his face slightly toward one shoulder to peer closer into the room, not immediately trusting his good eye and resigning himself to the situation of Jude’s presence in his home. Relief at being sheltered once more battered with anger at himself for forgetting he had placed a guard, until finally fatigue took over and nullified the question from his mind. He sighed and mouthed a faint Italian curse before continuing farther into the room and finding his armchair just where he had left it.
Daniel had fallen asleep on his side in the woods, pillowed on his arm, and the damage was therefore a wash of scalded skin and bloody char in the pattern of falling light. One eye was lined with blood and his mouth was slightly twisted backward and down under the stretch of abused skin. The long line of his neck and shoulder, where visible under the sticky mess of his shirt, had the same unyielding burn, and judging from revealed hand and arm, the same was down his left side. Needless to say, he sat gingerly, the cat protesting and leaping onto chair before trying to knead into his lap. He gently pushed her off toward the floor before glancing upward to see what his guest would do with Daniel’s appearance. There was no phone to dive for, so at least he didn’t need to head off the inevitable “dial nine-one-one” rush that seemed trained in Americans since birth.
There was no immediate locomotion from the man in the corner to say he even looked for a phone to dive for. (Not that he would if there had been, given nine-one-one was uncomfortably close to the bells and whistles of America’s finest and Jude rather preferred to keep the long arm of the law - the one in the cities - out of the way). No, if he’d been trained in diving for that particular item, he didn’t now. He jumped, though. The book had been engrossing, and the cat sliding off his lap in greeting her lord and master was the first signal he had that Daniel had even appeared.
Jude surveyed Daniel with quiet and most likely studied self-control. No particular horror, or squeamishness, (no running directly for the door, thank you) but concern sifted up to front. The man looked raw, like he’d had his skin peeled or he’d been beaten or something between the two. Once, when the heat had gone off for an interminable amount of time because the boss-man had forgotten to pay such mortal considerations as the bills, there had been space heaters. A boy had fallen asleep in front of one so wriggled-close to the frame of it that his skin in the morning had bubbled in angry red streaks. It reminded Jude uncomfortably of that.
He moved then, palms on knees to straighten and unfolded the inches of his frame up along the wall, “You look like you’ve been in the wars.” And the other side armed to the teeth, a veritable Goliath to Daniel’s David. “Do you have aloe vera? Or forsaking that, black tea? Don’t bite my head off, but I’d like to help.”
Daniel could be David, in stature if not in temperament, with his dark curls and unimpressive height, but he didn’t have the color of a shepherd and certainly none of the demeanor that came with unyielding faith in a higher power. Daniel was cynicism coiled in silk and teeth, and sometimes the veneer of antique book leather revealed a decaying ache beneath, but none of that compared with the shining certainty of Claire and her ilk.
“Tea, I think, is… in there.” Daniel lifted one hand (the bad one, stiff at the joints with reddened flesh) and waved it in the direction of the kitchen. Daniel kept a number of beverages on hand, especially caffeinated ones, and though they were unforgivably modern, carbonated beverages reminded him of overly sugared champagne, so sometimes he kept those too. It was obvious he was more fond coffee than tea these days, but there were some in the otherwise unimpressive cupboards. Daniel didn’t even have the abandoned can of soup or package of oatmeal.
Daniel watched Jude uncertainly for a moment, fending off the cat without looking down, before feeling he needed to say: “I am fine.”
Very wise, cynicism. Cynicism and human nature went hand in hand and skipped toward predictability, and perhaps that way lay certainty that could be bitten between teeth and tested. All for the good, Jude was oblivious, because he swung himself up to full length and stretched out and grinned easily at Daniel, easy sunshine as if the man didn’t look like a freshly pulverized piece of steak.
“Of course, never better, hale and hearty and all that.” Invading Daniel’s kitchen felt much less like carving out a piece of his carpet had felt like invading the room but given the barren nature of hearth and home in the center of domesticity that was supposed to be the kitchen, Jude supposed it was much less of an invasion in practicality as well as spirit.
Tea, tea, and there was nothing in the cupboards that beared resemblance to something he much wanted to get acquainted with. Jude worked his way through kettle and water, and black tea, and leaned into the door-frame to look at tableau: Daniel-with-cat. A smile unabashed, undimmed, and perhaps a wee bit of guilty pleasure at seeing the inside of the abode.
“Mimi, you callous thing, you. All afternoon, so demanding, and the minute your man arrives, I’m yesterday’s news. Tea’s supposed to help. Burns. Need to steep it and cool it first though, so we might be here a minute or five.”
Daniel didn’t have enough presence of mind or energy to fully think through any of his actions at that moment. He finally got the cat situated on one side of his body that didn’t hurt, and looked down at her with the bemused benevolence of a new father for a few minutes while Jude opened and closed various cabinetry. By this time Daniel had resigned himself to the alien presence within, and he was so pleased to be home there was little else that concerned him, not even whatever conclusions Jude might draw about his condition, or who he might tell. It wasn’t clearly mortal, so it was only the healing that would need to be concealed. Later. Later, later.
Daniel breathed out slowly in the background of kettle-on-stove sounds, the open floor plan making him fully visible to kitchen and vise versa.
“She is choosy about her company,” Daniel said, fondly. “Expensive women are.” He put his hand over the top of the cat’s ears and pressed his fingers down into her fur. As he did so, he wondered if he needed help, help with the mess of his skin and the next twenty-four hours of growing half of it back, but he wasn’t sure who to ask. He had turned Claire away at the threshold, not wanting to inconvenience her further nor particularly enjoying the prospect of her being further witness to his foolishness. Sam had enough on her mind, Cris likewise. He loved Lin to distraction and Daniel wasn’t interested in attending their first meeting as raw meat. Louis was equally complicated, for different reasons, and Daniel suspected he was using the man and Louis knew it. A virtual stranger, surely, was better. Turning his chin and squinting through that bloody eye, he said with a sigh, “Bring me some of those kitchen shears in the drawer.”
Expensive women, in Jude’s recollection, demanded payment for the privilege of said company or extracted it for a higher bidder when such a man materialized but lo, the ordinary and empty-pocketed cannot be too glum about lack of high-roller entertainment or its temporary and transient nature. “Choosy, except when there’s no other offer.” He liked the animal, and it showed, humor glazed with warmth. Jude liked most creatures that could largely take care of themselves and were therefore all the harder to hold onto. (Hello, personal issues).
The kettle was quiescent when Jude was done rattling through cupboards, so he meandered out obedient as a lamb with the set of kitchen shears duly located. And present moment precluded asking Daniel why he didn’t own enough food to keep body and soul alive but owned about every book that had drifted through Repose. Most of them, Jude had identified, sadly, as having never been his pleasure to read before and looked decidedly and wonderfully interesting.
That people in Repose were chain-linked together in a daisy-chain of impossible personal connections was becoming rapidly more steadfast in Jude’s mind but oblivious at least to the turmoil in the man-who-looked-like-a-woefully-overdone-s
Books made Daniel feel comfortable. Their presence and smell made a place otherwise empty full, a cocoon of words of his own making. Books never made Daniel feel old, they never made him feel alone, and they were there for him even when he treated them badly. They would be always new, and yet could also be reassuringly familiar. Daniel was weak indeed without the shield of other people’s knowledge to hold out the oncoming wave of time passing.
“Thank you.” Daniel reached over the cat’s head and took the scissors, though he didn’t call them that, and averted his gaze from Jude’s inquiring one. “Go turn on some music, or something.” It would be a hunt for the controls and small player that would keep Jude occupied, and a stack of LPs that offered a number of different classical and operatic pieces. Daniel didn’t want the boy to be staring at him, but he also didn’t want him to leave. The books were not quite enough, at that moment.
“You must have thought something was chasing you.” Daniel’s sense of smell was still working, and he knew (at least partly) who had been downstairs. He took the scissors and started cutting up the inside of his sleeve, gritting his teeth as he separated cloth from flesh. The freshly-blossoming scent of blood made the cat leap off the chair and retreat under it.
Books were old friends to most people who were used to finding pieces of themselves in other things. Jude’s own room was a library as much as it was a place to sleep, and was it odd that Daniel liked to surround himself with old paper and old words? Not at all. Jude recognized a few familiar faces having hefted the boxes across town himself, and patted one name with the flat of his thumb in passing, affectionate as a kiss on the cheek to an old friend.
But ever ordered about, ever obedient, because he hadn’t yet been thrown out by the scruff of his collar (metaphorical so much as physical, Daniel’s physical capabilities being visibly diminished for present time, but scout’s honor, Jude would have felt a modicum of guilt in taking advantage so completely in the absence of solid and significant goal to be achieved, honest). Jude acquainted himself with the architecture of record-players. No CDs or even tapes, but Daniel was alike unto a man out of time and it made sense that a man out of time turned to the solidly consistent. There was a crackle, and a hiss as the record-player protested abuse, and then the reassuring flattened sound of oboe before music filled the space. Jude was on his hands and his knees, working his way through the albums when the damp metal smell filled the air so completely and the cat whisked herself out of the way.
Jude knew the smell of blood. He knew how much could fit inside a human body and how it looked when it no longer fit, as it happened. He turned his face up toward where Daniel’s had sharpened along the jaw and cheekbones as he set teeth against what was self-evidently painful and held out a hand for the scissors in response. “We did.” And thus, guilt roiled around and made itself present, albeit Jude squashed it so far as was possible.
“We were under the influence and my gentleman friend decided kicking in the door was quicker than picking the lock when a horde of angry men were at our heels.” Droll, really, Jude’s tone rather than the memory, but he’d carefully stripped the sentiment out of it and left nothing but patter behind. “Would you let me? You look like you’re trying to flay yourself otherwise.”
Jude didn’t know a damn thing about Daniel’s physical capabilities. Even in this condition, Daniel could take Jude’s throat in his hand, separate it from his spine, and be licking his fingers before Jude realized death was coming. And yet in that moment, Daniel was neither hungry nor dangerous, and violence was far from his mind. The sun leached his strength from him, and he was still seeing sunspots through the pain and the bloody mess of his skin. He felt chastised for his foolishness, and frightened that he would run temporarily mad again, and the spells of forgetting would wash over him and leave him in low-tide amongst bodies he didn’t remember mangling.
The soaring nightingale from the record player soothed his mind, however. Daniel was always in a better mood when there were pretty things around him, books, music and the warmer things of humankind. They kept him sober and reminded him of life.
Daniel stopped sawing at the material when Jude returned to the armchair, and he leaned away from him temporarily with a look clear on the good side of his face, of uncertainty and not-quite-mistrust. “It’s just stuck. You don’t have to stay.” He wasn’t sure what Jude was doing there, exactly. Perhaps it was curiosity. What did the boy do in his spare time, anyway? More deliveries? He did not look like he belonged in a small town. Weren’t there… ice cream shops, or such, to keep young men busy?
While all the thinking about bodies was deeply disturbing and potentially deathly, Jude’s understanding of Daniel’s capability was limned down to what he could see in front of him, notably a man who looked like a tenderized piece of steak in an expensive restaurant. He didn’t have the faintest idea that there was a current of strength that ran through him, the riptide in deep water, but he did the air of faint but present danger, courtesy a stand-off in a library. But there was no imminent threat, no darkly-drawn scowl. The cat was licking her fur clean of the stench of raw meat and blood over in the far corner.
Jude didn’t shake out his best and most convincing smile from storage for Daniel, because he had every consideration that Daniel couldn’t be worked over as easily as a regular con. (Rich, older men. So difficult to convince.) He met that look of - intriguing, was Daniel usually unsure about anything? - with conviction. Why was Jude there? Leave aside the finer stuff of humanity, ensuring the man didn’t rot to death in a chair, leave aside the fact of entry into sanctum sanctum (given he hadn’t made inroads past the living room it’s fair to say not the motivating factor). Not that ice-cream shops were a particular pull, Daniel. Jude preoccupied himself with people, and Daniel was a particular thicket of entirely bemusing fact.
“I know.” He did: of course he could leave. “Scissors, please. It’s stuck, and it’s a lot easier to help than to watch you peel apart burned skin and fabric. It’s like some proxy torture show. Will you let me help?” Which really is what it came down to. The cat? That hadn’t even been a favor, barely registered. Fine bones and warm fluff and a purr that hummed for a couple of hours.
Daniel did not imagine Jude had the skills to be a confidence man, not in his wildest dreams. But then he, Daniel, regularly underestimated everyone around him, and underestimated himself in his turn, so it was no surprise. Jude seemed to him to be an open book, a lack of mystery, complex only because his life was lived in the sunshine where Daniel could not see (and rarely bothered). Daniel imagined Jude operated off money, as most of the world did, and the rest of his interest was like Daniel’s, that of a bystander on the long road of life. Jude was therefore classified as harmless, at worst a busybody or a small-town gossip, and he sent cat toys and books, two strong points that encouraged immediate approval, if not necessarily trust.
Maybe the problem was that Daniel couldn't read Jude. He was a neutral face of friendly deliveries and ironic commentary. Lin was spontaneous and rattled with knowledge, Sam as deep and inscrutable as a crystal pool. Even Claire was simple and earnest in her way. No one kept secrets from Daniel except the white cat.
Daniel stared at him for several seconds, not realizing the thought was moving as slow at it as it did, broiling around in the stained blue eye. Finally he withdrew his hand and allowed Jude the plastic handles of the scissors. “Do your worst, then.” It was a vaguely British thing to say, a betrayal of tongue to fatigue, and to punctuate the statement, Daniel let out a sigh and leaned back and to the side against the spreading wings of the armchair. The damask was a faded red and phoenix gold, spreading out in textile solemnity behind him. Daniel blinked and felt the left side of his face pinch, and he thought of Quasimodo and his high tower, not for the first time. “‘Le hibou n'entre pas dans le nid de l'alouette,’” he muttered to himself, smiling faintly.
He looked down at his sleeve. “I burnt, and it stuck,” he said, pointlessly.
Rarely did anyone believe Jude had the capacity for building confidences. His delicate ego endured, thanks ever so, because it was entirely the basis upon which confidences are built: whether he was fanned pages and a broken spine or jammed in with all the other books on the shelf, mystery was carefully behind the curtain (and wasn’t that the proper place for mystery, after all?)
Now he took the (slightly sticky, it had to be said) handles of the scissors as Daniel held them out and while it wasn’t with pleasure - it being not remotely pleasurable, for the avoidance of doubt, to slice strips of fabric off skin that had bubbled and blistered to it, deeply the opposite, rather - he watched Daniel sag back with a degree of feeling like he’d brought some kind of relief.
“That sounds entirely like you expect me to do more damage than you already have,” Jude handled the scissors with delicacy because there were only so many ways you could cut without ribboning off the skin underneath and that seemed counter-productive in the extreme. Daniel seemed unaffected by the seriousness of the hurt, but Jude had long since come to the conclusion that Daniel had been through something or a series of somethings (one not nearly enough to leave a man reclusive and twitchy) that had bolstered his ability to endure. And he had a vague sense - call it self-preservation instinct, Jude did, healthy fear for keeping body and soul intact - that had he reacted at all to the state of Daniel, which was pretty fearsome, Daniel would have thrown him down the stairs.
“What does it mean, please? Some of us lack fine education and fancy French vocabulary, and I’m not talking about the feline.” Jude bent his head over his task and was methodical about it.
Daniel was relieved to have someone safe with him, and the more anonymous the better. Jude did not know any inconvenient questions to ask; he had no history, and nothing to demand of Daniel except money and diversion. There would be no stares of recrimination or thinly-veiled pity, and he was a comforting presence to Daniel, who was more shaken at this recent lapse than he had fully revealed to Claire.
Daniel shook his head, a gesture that made the reddened skin of his neck move harshly over his collarbone. He winced. “I don’t think you can do much. Cloth’s got to come off.” Daniel shuddered and looked away from his damaged arm, wrinkling his nose up and shutting his eyes in the picture of a child with a skinned knee on the playground. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll try the shower and see if I can soak it off. Hurts like you wouldn’t believe.” Daniel had at least managed the buttons and shrugged his right shoulder out of the shirt, revealing pale, unremarkable skin and the musculature of an abandoned scholar.
“Quasimodo says it to the gypsy girl in his tower,” Daniel told him. “Owl to the lark, he says. I just thought of it, because…” Here he let one open palm drift toward his damaged brow, indicating the mess of burnt skin.
Jude didn’t much go in for inconvenient questions at the best of times, largely because either he already knew the answer (hello, surveillance) or because it had the propensity for leaving chosen subject feeling itchy and uncomfortable which wasn’t conducive to the job at hand (his). He was of course, itching to know why Daniel looked like scorched meat, but the egg hunt had left them all a little metaphorically raw and if he could fall into a pit of despair and sing out secrets to a stranger, Daniel coming back looking like a side of steak wasn’t out of the realms of possibility, was it? Ever the gentleman, he held his tongue and watched Daniel as he moved around in the chair almost on the sly.
“Yes, highly inconvenient, clothes. We should all just walk around naked. Please don’t soak it, I have a horrible feeling that’ll just leave you with soggy wet fabric stuck to your skin rather than help. The tea might. Better the aloe vera, do you want something for the pain?” Innocent question asked kneeling at the foot of the man. Not having lent his mind to Daniel’s pain tolerance or otherwise (somewhat preoccupied with his taste in books and felines, thanks ever so - neither the inclination toward situations that were painful, not premonition that such information would be pressed into touch) Jude could see now that wherever it was, crisped clothes over skin helped not at all.
And Jude laughed. It was a comfortable bubble in throat. “You’re comparing yourself to Quasimodo? Well, you’ve the tower of isolation in common, but hardly anything else. You’re not an ugly hunchback, you’re just burned a bit. Don’t get aspirations above present situation,” loftily. “And if I’m a gypsy girl, you’d better supply the tamborine. I can’t sing to save my life.” He fetched the tea, which had cooled now, and which Jude entirely ignored in favor of the tea-bags themselves. “We’ll start small. Yelp if this actually makes it worse.” The first cool teabag dotted onto the exposed skin where the scissors had lifted away the cloth, and Jude went back to work.
Daniel made a sound of distaste through his teeth. He was growing even more pale around the gills, the points of pressure around his mouth reddened with strain, and his eyes down to slits. “I’m sober forty-two days tomorrow, no, I do not have anything in the house for pain.” Daniel didn’t like pain very much, but he was also aware that through his life it was generally pain that kept him grounded, and emotional pain was what kept him from becoming a total monster. There was also something different about pain when you knew you could not die; a lack of cringing, a suffering without real fear.
Daniel put up with the well-meaning ministrations for another quarter hour, impressive really, as Jude inched the fabric off and put up with Daniel swearing at him in three languages, but eventually Daniel had enough. “Get out of the way.” He reached out and pushed Jude’s shoulder, as if he were a tailor who got too careless with the clothes tacks, and he stood up. There was no one else to witness, the cat gone, when Daniel stood up, took two handfuls of what fabric there was remaining, and started tearing it off the seared skin.
It was not pretty.
After, there was blood coming down his shoulder and side, old red staining the chair, his hands, and spreading down the left side of his slacks. He looked like something out of a horror movie, and his eyes were not quite right, either. He was breathing hard like oxygen might help, and he moved past Jude at a limp toward the bathroom, shuddering like the whole night could be rinsed off.
Jude reared back on his knees from the chair, obedient as any old tailor in some store on Savile Row with irritable, irascible customer (hello, Daniel, we’re drawing new comparison points) and his own lap strewn with bits of bloodied cloth inched off in flitters when Daniel took the grotesque and gory approach of rending the shirt from his body with brute force alone. Testament to good training and years enough with men who conducted nefarious activity under shadows when Jude flinched not at all. His pupils narrowed and his eyelashes lowered for a split-second longer than an ordinary blink but his face, sir, was composed as a saint at church.
Which was just as well, because Daniel looked like he’d been carved out of stone. Something about the way pain drew the flesh over the bone, something distinctly odd, if Jude was forced to consider it, about the eyes. And it was very compelling and deeply admirable that sobriety was worth shedding what looked like half a pint over the soft furnishings - but really now, Jude was worried enough to drop the handful of shirt fabric at his feet and follow, a half-step behind. Daniel could, of course (would, most definitely) put a door between Jude and he - but when he looked like blood loss and shock and pain would drown him if he stood under a shower for too long, Jude was going to get comfy with the floor outside and break the door in if said irascible occupant sounded like he’d fallen over.
The cat had banished herself, somewhere there was no blood and bloodied clothing, somewhere men were entirely sane and did not get themselves burned up.
“Scream if you need something.” Calm, and with at least a couple of meters grace between he and the door, Jude occupied carpet. “I’ll clean up the chair once I’m certain you’re not going to drown in a perfectly preventable home accident.”
Daniel didn’t drown. In the end he didn’t stay in the water long at all, despite letting it run, because it hurt too much on his peeled skin, and he was too exhausted and trying not to think about the events of the past few hours. He reappeared again after some short blur of time, nearing again to the regular heartbeat of Jude puttering around his kitchen. He was not concerned about his appearance and very concerned with keeping rough cloth off his vulnerable hide, so he was shirtless and wearing cotton drawers that did not fit in this century. Drawstring pajama bottoms were probably as close as you could get, and the wash of the burn across his left side was most severe one elbow and shoulder, falling down like a red shadow across his chest and stomach.
There was nothing wrong with the tired blue eyes now.
Daniel didn’t sit in the chair again, but stretched out sideways on the foot of the bed, gingerly, and watched Jude with narrowed slits of eyes. “Going to need a new chair.”
The putter through the kitchen had tied away the evidence of attempts at pain-relief that didn’t break sobriety. But the chair was beyond all help, Heaven-sent or just one curly-headed boy who looked at it now as Daniel padded rather than prowled into his own place looking like he belonged in a period piece. It was a pity, because it had been a nice chair. Jude hadn’t the foggiest whether it belonged originally to the Loves, or whether it was Daniel’s own but there was a distinct air of distinguished chaos to the muddle of books and lack of light. Very ...well, very Heathcliff, really, if Heathcliff stood around in his underwear and glowered at you from the foot of his own bed.
“Yes,” Jude agreed with sage gravity, “You do.” Not a word passed his lips as to the malady that had caused the singed flesh and the blood-soaked cushions, but Jude regarded Daniel with something like warm concern, even as his gaze smoothed over the depth of the burn. “You’ve wrecked it entirely. It probably constitutes hazardous material, now.” Cheerfully. “Although I’m not sure I could persuade the hospital to put it in their trash, it being a chair and not bandages or needles or the like.”
Jude did not look burned or singed or even vaguely harmed. The brown eyes were tired and the smile came readily enough but with a folded sort of look, like a piece of paper much taken out and put away again with the creases showing temporarily. It had been a very long day, his secrets had been put to music and he was worried that imminent sleep and darkness would resurrect the day in his dreams: but he was not burned. He ran a hand through his curls backwards, looked at Daniel. “Do I need to get you anything? Not a chair.”
The chair was Daniel’s, something he would choose, unwieldy, with character, a comforting embrace--and a considerable price tag. Chopping it up like kindling and throwing it out the window would be easier than getting the thing down the stairs, even if one wanted to handle the disgusting chore, and it was clear that Daniel, with his current resemblance to a side of rare beef, wasn’t going to be moving anything for a little while. The vampire eyed Jude once more to see if he could detect sarcasm, and then squeezed his eyes shut in fatigued feline fashion.
“Replace it. Bill me. Bill me for whatever.” He didn’t think Jude did much for charity, because he thought everyone in this nowhere town was dirt poor and because Jude was not strictly a friend. Daniel had chosen not to call a friend, and so he was willing to pay for Jude, and treat him kindly, rather than as a potential meal.
Daniel turned his head into the comforter so his nose was down and his face was hidden. The pain was not abating even as he healed, and he had sunspots and glare even when he ceased to see. “Thank you,” he said, reluctant, muffled.
Jude was not, in the main, a charitable soul. Charity was for people who pitied other people, and his pity was reserved for those who deserved it, please and thank you. And while Daniel looked miserable and pale - the blood loss had to be moderately significant judging by the state of the chair - he did not look pitiful because if he’d wanted careful handling, he could have toddled toward the hospital. That Daniel felt terrible was clear, not least for the gratitude that emerged, a little subdued by feathers, from the bedclothes. Jude didn’t think Daniel knew how.
“I need a hazmat suit first,” because replacing was all very well, but the thing needed removing first. And Jude was almost apologetic - sidling close, in fact, but needs must and privacy was damned if you were going to get elbow deep in gore wrestling a chair out the front. “Standard question when encountering bodily fluids: you don’t have anything, do you?”
And while Jude wasn’t precisely trying to stride the divide between willing runner for all things that amused and intrigued, and the bond of bosom companionship - the latter he thought Heathcliff didn’t tolerate - he did raise one eyebrow and then another. “Bill you for bleeding out on the upholstery? No thanks, sunshine. We’ll call this one a freebie.”
Daniel’s inflection didn’t change, though he had to roll his head to one side to be heard. “Don’t eat it, and you’ll be fine.”
Daniel had never created another of his kind, and he thought that he would prefer to see friends die (and they had) then inflict this kind of life on them. There was something deep and binding about such an act that Daniel was not naturally inclined to take, since forever was probably worse than a marriage, and could go stale faster that the days went by. All the same, he generally made sure he didn’t bleed around the sick, ailing or dying. Just to be on the safe side.
One hand limply rose and fell, a kingly gesture. “As you like.” Then, in a faintly apologetic but not uncertain voice: “Please go away.”
Why Daniel thought anyone would chew on a chair was much of a muchness, because Jude knew dismissal when he saw it. Thus banished, with only a moment to bid fond-farewell to Mimi, he departed leaving Daniel to his bilious gloom.